^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 914 318 5 



HoUinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



MOBILIZATION 

An address to University Men ^ 

By 
John H. Finley 

IN the summer of 1914 I visited Oxford University 
two or three weeks before the war came on, and 
Cambridge University three or four weeks after 
it had begun. At Oxford there was the calm of the 
cloister. There were memorials of poets, scholars, 
statesmen, princes and soldiers, dim with years, and 
there were academic conventions that paid no heed to 
the customs of the world outside. But at Cambridge, 
Cambridge which but a month or six weeks before 
had been as Oxford, the town was filled with men in 
khaki. Thirty thousand territorials were encamped 
there. They marched through the streets. They 
rowed on the River Cam. They washed the dust 
from their faces in its waters. One of the colleges, 
the one which I most wished to see, was closed in 
preparation for use as a hospital. Here and there I 
saw a don in learned costume, and at the cafe I heard 
a few students discussing matters of philosophy or 
science, but for the rest the glory of the school of 
Newton and Milton was forgotten in the rough prepar- 



^ Delivered at a dinnei of the University Club in Brooklyn. March 25, 1916. 



3 ^^ ^ ^ 



ation for the grim game of war in the " sodden fields 
of Flanders." 

But I have one clear Cambridge memory that was 
not of this preparedness. In St John's College, through 
which I wandered alone, I found on the walls of the 
dining hall, where it could look out into the street, the 
portrait of one of her sons who has written what Augus- 
tine Birrell has called the greatest satire on modern life 
since " Gulliver's Travels " — a portrait which he had 
painted of himself before he went off to the sheep 
ranches of Australia. It was a portrait of Samuel 
Butler, whose book " Erewhon " described a land 
where there were Colleges of Unreason, colleges 
m which students were promoted for excellence in 
vagueness and were plucked for insufficient trust in 
printed matter, colleges m which the principal profes- 
sorships were those of Inconsistency an^J* Evasion, and 
the principal courses those in hypothetics, conducted in 
a hypothetical language; colleges in which intellectual 
overindulgence was looked upon as one of the most 
insidious and disgraceful forms of excess, and whose 
graduates almost invariably suffered from atrophy of 
individual opinions. 

This satire but illustrates criticisms which we often 
hear concerning our own college life; of the lack of 
serious intellectual interests, of the devotion to sport, 
of the lack of practicality, of the protracted immaturity 
and the false appraisements of values, on the part of 
those adorable, lovable fellows whose doubles we our- 
selves were once. 

^1AY 23 1916 



I have wondered what the Cambridge satirist would 
say if he were today to scan the records of his younger 
fellow graduates of these " hypothetical " and " atro- 
phying " courses of social and intellectual training. 

Last June at the time of year which is for us the 
commencement season, there was published in the 
London Times a summary of the enlistments of the 
men of the several Cambridge colleges who had entered 
the war. Their names filled a book of seventy pages 
and showed a known total of 8850 men, 336 of whom 
had been killed, and 423 wounded, — an appalling 
mortality, due, it is claimed, to the exposed position 
which many of these men as platoon commanders 
assumed. Ninety were mentioned in despatches for 
bravery, 1 8 won the military cross, and 1 8 more won 
still higher distinction. 

But it is not this splendid record which has alone 
excited my admiration; nor that of the Oxford men 
put beside it in as brave figures; for Oxford, one has 
said, " hardly dares to count her dead." It is an 
accompanying paragraph which tells that a complete 
list of the members of Cambridge University has 
recently been compiled, stating the service which each 
resident member feels he can most usefully offer 
and that the numerous laboratories at Cambridge have 
been placed at the disposal of the government, with 
a clear and succinct statement of the work each labora- 
tory can do best to promote the prosperity of the armies 
in the field. " Cambridge has mobihzed herself," says 
the announcement. Yes, she has transported herself 
mto another state of spirit. 



In peace the connection between learning and the 
need of the state becomes obscure and indirect and 
impersonal, but today one sees illustrated in those ven- 
erable institutions the dependence of the state on that 
learning, which has been the target of the practical 
man, but which has now come to shame the " slacker " 
and lead where the need is most perilous. No one 
doubts that if the same calls come out of the bomb- 
stained sky, or the mine-spread sea, or the trench- 
ploughed field to the colleges of America and their grad- 
uates, there will be the same mobilization of spirit. I do 
not have anxiety as to this. But what I am concerned 
for is that even without these signals we shall see this 
connection and shall mobilize our learning, our think- 
ing, our courage, our industry, our skill, our art, our 
science, in the service of the same state which is as 
needful of defense in peace as ever it is in war. I 
wrote to the philosopher, William James, a little time 
before his death when that dearly lost philosopher had 
made me see more clearly this connection and this 
duty, that I not only wished to enlist myself but I 
would try to raise a regiment for my country. And I 
have been a recruiting sergeant ever since, trying to 
fill my phantom regiment for James's invisible and 
invincible army of those who are willing to pay a 
blood-tax in peace as well as in war for the privilege 
of belonging to a " collectivity " superior to their 
individual selves. 

It is true that I have been trying to keep out of the 
schools distinctively military training, but that does 



not mean that I am opposed to preparedness. On the 
other hand, I am wishing that the state might conscript 
everybody to give some service to the state, under a 
plan of constructive preparedness, commandeer every 
selfish luxury and waste and indulgence, call to the 
colors periodically every useful skill and science and 
art and industry, and compel a general mobilization 
for the common defense of our ideals, but not alone 
with the gun. And I am opposed to compelling the 
boys in school to take the gun end of it except as a 
final necessity, not because I want them to be spared 
any hardness or discipline, but because I do not want 
them to carry into a new generation the idea that this 
fighting with the gun is the supreme or only valor or 
means of patriotic service. We of our generation may 
have to stain our hands with the blood of our world 
brothers, but it were better so if we could only let our 
children build with unstained hands the thing we 
desire for our beloved country. 

For see what we are doing: we talk with patriotic 
air, we boast of what we'll do and dare, and then — 
we make the boys prepare to do it. Let us who have 
the vote put the service upon ourselves and give our 
boys that basic physical training, nurture of spirit and 
discipline of mind which will not only enable them to 
endure hardness but will make them willing and eager 
to undergo later special training to take our places if 
need be. 

An Oxford professor tells of his supreme humili- 
ation in seeing one day men crowding one another to 



find room in a train going to the races, while the 
Oxford men were almost literally crowding their way 
into the trenches, while Oxford halls were filled with 
wounded Britishers and refugee Belgians. If we could 
but see that this is actually going on here today, that 
men, and women too, are crowding one another in 
running after selfish pleasure and luxury while others 
are literally fighting for them in private shop or public 
office with as great sacrifice and bravery as those 
splendid university men have shown on the red edge 
of the war. 

We are none of us too old to be " last ditchers " 
in service of the state. We shall not be, pray God, till 
we put on our shrouds. Let us learn our spiritual 
lesson as we look on at this bloody world clinic. Let 
us ask ourselves as a people how every intelligence 
can be mobilized, how in peace we can develop a 
clean, efficient, public service and enter upon a policy 
of national constructive defense. 

I would make " conscript " a noble word by mak- 
ing it synonymous with " citizen " in a republic with 
a mission and an ideal worth fighting for. Till that 
time comes, may every American university man do 
what every Cambridge student has done, conscript 
himself and each one offer to his country the best that 
he has to give. May American universities do what 
Cambridge has done, not await government mobiliza- 
tion but mobilize themselves ! 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 914 318 5 



